the up and downs of a startup geek

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As I transition slowly out of Placemeter / Netgear, I’m exploring a variety of other ideas along with working again with some of my favorite friends.

Starting early March, I’ll spend a good portion of my week helping Nathan and the rest of the TradeIt team on a variety of subjects. As part of my re-education on the fintech space (I dabbled in it a bit during the Gilt City days), I’m trying to attend as many events on the space as possible.

Tech:NYC and TradeIt hosted a Chatham House Rule session for leaders in the space yesterday, from banks to aggregators, while I can’t attribute comments or name names, my observations on this hot spacer are included below.

Back in 1997, as pointed out by Nate, the debate raged first when Microsoft & Intuit were creating a standard “OFX”. But, mid-2016, Jamie Dimon positioned himself as the consumer advocate for banking data. A very unlikely position that mostly betrays the growing frustration between:

application developers that build products on top of these aggregators (think Mint or Current),

and the data originators, mostly the large commercial banks

The consumer is, as usual, taken hostage on a debate that centers around data ownership, value chain capture and innovation. Originally, the rise of the aggregators was prompted by the inability or lack of desire of banks to build the infrastructure allowing other companies to plug themselves into their pipes. You could compare it to the early days of Twitter when a lot of the firehose and respective data were handled by Gnip and Datasift.

Banks are getting smarter and understand they are letting a big part of the value (and ultimately could become entirely desintermediated) on the table by not owning that part of the chain.

The CFPB (who is at risk of being dead pretty soon given the Trump administration current stance) issued an RFI seeking input about data aggregation. The RFI is here and you can read on page 5 the list of 17 questions they are trying to get answers on.

Having recently spent a good amount of my time on civic tech, gov tech and open data, this reminds me of the tension that still exist between cities, citizens and a tech world who is trying to build an application layer on top of the data produced by administration. The pendulum swung wildly in favor of more transparency during the Obama years but, just like the below tweet illustrate, the pendulum can go back pretty fast on the other extreme.

My initial reaction is to think that as a consumer, as the one who initially “created” the data that is collected by my bank (bought X, wired money to Y, withdrew Z $$$), I should be empowered to use my data in any way that I see fit, as long as I’m the one approving that use, and that the data ingestion is secure etc. But this covers many more issues that need to be fleshed out:

what is informed consent from a consumer perspective? (i.e. how often to you read in details what info you give and not give to an aggregator or a developer),

what data are you granting and shouldn’t we have different treatment and different consent layers for different type of data (PII vs transactions level vs aggregated etc etc),

what is the role of the regulator on this and how much role would we like him/her to play vs. agreeing at industry level (define industry though) on a set of guidelines,

and the list could go on and on…

Another lingering question is, as part of the overhaul of Dodd-Frank, what will end up happening to the section 1033, the one protecting consumers. While it’s most likely not going to be dismantled, it could 1. be severely limited to the benefit of the large banking players and 2. it could start shifting some of the data responsibility away from these same banks. To be followed.

But I can’t help smiling when Dimon takes my defense as a consumer while, on the other side, pushing like crazy to dismantle Dodd – Frank and any regulation limiting his company…

Like this:

Last night I went to Blue Note to see the amazing Roy Hargrove and his quintet. The back and forth between him and the rest of the band, the way that he would let his sax goes all the way on his solo, that then he would catch on the melody and then the pianist would take on the next rift, then the drummer etc. reminded me of how a great startup is a collection of amazing talents and the best founders are the ones that let the other members of the team shine, push their own melody while discretely keeping everyone on tempo, and ultimately wrapping up the song.

Jazz is the only place where you find that mix of improvisation, little touches here and there that still contributes to the overall melody while following a loose script. This reminds me of your startup in Seed and Series A stage before you start migrating to something a lot more structured, akin to something like that, with very limited space for creativity…

One of the great benefit of having a few years behind you is the much more precise sense of what you want and don’t want to do, live, experience etc. I’ve been head down for the past 4 years and I didn’t realize how much more I now know what I could get excited by vs. not. I tend to be pretty optimistic and can get enthusiastic about a project quickly. But this initial rush that, in the past, could have been long lasting, quickly now fades away for a clearer sense of why I would pick something over something else.

You make less mistakes, you know better how to steer the vehicle, what to look out for, what to avoid. What I’ve been working on over the last few weeks is to avoid having this fresh clarity comes in the way of taking risks and constantly challenge my initial assumptions about something.

The other key takeaway for me what how definitive I am that my next project, whether I start it or I join another company, has to transport me, exalt me.

Too few years left to spend them on things that get you unhappy. Objects are closer than they appear…

Like this:

I’ve been doing a bit of traveling over the past two years, as we realize our vision of creating a more intelligent and data-driven city. From Jakarta to Dubai, Sao Paulo to Mexico City, Hong Kong to London, or Barcelona to Singapore, some of these large cities, while enormously removed from each other, share a lot of common traits.

The Living City

The metaphor of the city as a living organism began a long time ago — Plato’s Republic draws an analogy between city-states and individuals. But more recently, researchers have started using the laws of biology to try to understand how a city grows.

Humans get roughly 1 billion heartbeats. A bigger organism, like an elephant, gets less. It must consume more energy, so its heartbeat is slower, and its life expectancy scales upwards in the same linear manner. Similarly, a large city will consume drastically less energy per capita than a small village.

This uniformity of scaling does not necessarily mean that cities grow the same way. You can almost think about them as layer cakes, with generations of people, designs, and architecture, and a patchwork of emotional and rational decisions. And that’s what ultimately gives them their charm — strolling around Little India in Singapore is a completely different experience than walking through Roma in Mexico City.

But more recently, a few trends have been pushing people all around the world to want their cities to have and embody the same exact things. There are a two factors driving this uniformization:

Retail, “shopping” culture, and the omnipresence of global brands means consumers respond well to brands delivering the same experience in different cities

Communication, including “social” communication like Facebook and Instagram, exaggerates the uniformization of tastes, looks, and desires started by movies, music, and television

The impact on cities and their populations is drastic: you can have the same exact experience, no matter where you are.

“A Brand New Shopping Experience”

Last summer, I visited in Jakarta, Hong Kong, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in rapid succession. Everywhere I went, I stumbled upon commercial real estate projects “reinventing” the shopping experience. In the end, though, they all look alike — they’re shiny malls boasting the same brands.

This can’t be ascribed to laziness. Each brand and each mall has figured out the storefront designs and brand experiences that will get more shoppers into their stores. So while small tweaks in retail strategies may be made from region to region, the ultimate effect is one of homogenization.

And sure, a mall is a mall, but we see the same effect with many small businesses. Several New York City boutiques run successful Instagram shops, allowing them to sell to audiences far beyond their geographic location. This pushes small businesses in their customers’ locations to model their feeds and their stores after those in New York, again introducing a “sameness”.

“The New Brooklyn”

This trend doesn’t stop at the retail experience. Look at how Parisians are in love with a glorified image of Brooklyn. As a Frenchman who’s lived in New York for the last 10 years, nothing pains me more than going back to the city I grew up in to find it hawking bagel cafes and burger joints (this is a fun slideshow of such cafes). That’s not to mention fashions and hairstyles.

The media’s glorification of Brooklyn is influencing businesses in Paris, and its promotion of “starchitecture” is influencing leaders and planners in Beirut. But in the end, it comes down to idealism. It’s a belief that ideas and systems from other people and places are more successful than one’s own, and that adopting them will make one’s self and one’s society better.

I’m not saying cities should be frozen in time. One of the boring things about Paris is that the architecture is monotonous. It can feel as though France’s Monuments Historiques and their enforcers are fossilizing Paris.

That being said, reinvention should not mean cloning the same experiences all around the world. In contrast, New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, though strict in its requirements, allows for reinterpretation of historic forms, allowing for constant, if measured, reinvention.

So let’s stop trying to make everywhere the “New Brooklyn”! Instead, let’s advocate for delicate change, with a conscience of the past and of tradition, with a respect for the variety of people and ideologies involved and, with a sense of one’s roots and origins.

Like this:

I keep reading very positive articles and blog posts about how iBeacons and, in general, BLE beacons will forever change how we experience the physical world, how shopping environments will be reinvented, and how we might now be able to finally close the loop between online and offline consumer experiences.

As seducing as it may sound, this beacon-centric vision always misses a harsh reality: without consumer opt-in, you don’t have anything.

As with any marketplace, there’s two sides of the equation with their own specific friction points:

Physical deployment of beacons: the hardware is cheap, robust and, in some cases, even elegant. But you still need to get it deployed. Might be fast, might be slower than expected, but it will take some time

Pervasive integration of each SDK in apps. At the core of the solution, you still need a consumer opt-in. You need the user to download an app that includes the SDK of the beacon manufacturer. And you also need that consumer to have bluetooth on.

A lot of over-optimistic articles point out retailers as the first wave of early adopters. Now have some fun and go check the apps of your biggest retailers: check Macy’s for example. Arguably, the most successful of these retailers (retail in the broad sense of offline commerce) is Starbucks along with Walgreens behind. When you check rankings in downloads, Starbucks comes in only at #100, Walgreens at #142 and then, way behind, Target at #347.

It’s safe to say that downloads are minimums for the large majority of retailers. Without an app though, no communication with the users in your store. The alternate strategy would be to push your SDK in someone’s else app. Also skeptical on that: mostly because I feel that mobile SDKs are the new, “let me drop a quick javascript on the back of your website…” There’s an overload of mobile SDKs that are trying to do anything from tracking usage, pushing ads, retargeting etc.

For beacons to become the large opportunity that most of the journalists are excited about, you’ll need the onboarding of a few very large players. This is who I think could move the needle:

OS players like Apple and Android could change the game by making the iBeacon messaging opt-out rather than opt-in. There’s plenty of user experience and privacy issues with such a decision, but if beacons are actually widespread, there’s also the opportunity of creating an “Adsense for the physical world.”

OEMs, in conjunction with OS players could go after the same opportunity. Samsung is an obvious and likely candidate.

Very, very large mobile app players could embrace the SDK in their app if there’s a tight integration with their product. Facebook immediately comes to mind: tying up FB SMBs pages with offline messaging opportunity, tying up sponsored posts and FB ads with an offline extension. Right behind, you could imagine Yelp or Foursquare (although probably lacking critical mass to make it relevant).

In the meantime, stop telling me that the deployment of 250 beacons in Apple stores is changing the game. It’s not, yet.

I don’t write a lot of blog posts but when I do, I like them long… So brace yourself.

It is a tradition – the end of the year brings post-mortems, resolutions for a new year, regrets for past mistakes, hopes for the upcoming year. It’s a great time to clean up lingering issues, customers you never came back to, finalize next year’s product roadmap, reconnect with old friends etc. It’s also a great opportunity to spend some time thinking about what you learned and how to be better at what you do.

On my side, it’s been one of the most stressful and intense albeit fulfilling year. We went from having not much more than a good idea with the wrong execution and deployment strategy to an actual company with a great team and amazing backers.

Some background

For those of you who did not keep track, 2012 was for me another year of changes. I left my job at Gilt City to start a company with Paul Berry called CasaHop. We very quickly raised some nice seed money from a great roster of investors. We were trying to reinvent home swaps by removing some of the friction that happens when you do a home exchange. Paul is a big user of home exchanges and I became one – it is a unique experience, connecting people that don’t know each other and end up staying at each other houses. Our thesis was that the current incumbents like HomeExchange.com were outdated, not leveraging the social graph to bring liquidity and a bigger sense of trust. The reality was that the model was incredibly harder to scale that we initially anticipated and traction was not coming. I moved on in October but, even though this one didn’t work out, I was hooked on the roller coaster life of building companies.

While helping on the side some startups like Loosecubes and Ykone figure things out, I started a discussion with Alex, my current co-founder, about Placemeter. I was blown away by Alex’s vision:

The physical world is getting more and more instrumented. Currently thanks to smartphones, location-aware devices, location data, ibeacons. Tomorrow with the tens of billions of devices that are getting connected to the cloud

The relation between physical places and people is still incredibly outdated. In this digital age, it sounds very “analog” to have to go in person to places to get a sense of how it is and how it will be.

The disconnect between expectations and experiences for customers is ruining real world retail. Matching these two will have a dramatic effect on customer satisfaction, leading to higher AOVs, deeper brand loyalty and turning customers into brand advocates. As a great marketer friend was telling me: if you guys can solve that discrepancy, your solution will have incredible value for all CMOs around the world.

The first approach to solve that disconnect is to share with people how places are so they can know in advance what to expect. If we can collect and then distribute accurate real time data about physical locations (think “how busy a store is”, “how long the wait is”, “how many tables are free right now” etc.), something that no one yet figured how to aggregate, we were on to build a very valuable company.

So I whole-heartedly jumped in at the end of 2012 and joined Alex as a co-founder and employee #2.

The early days

Our initial approach to collect this data was to deploy physical sensors in locations. More precisely, sensors that were streamed into a mini-PC that would process in real time videos and then send the extracted data back to our servers using M2M connections. The first sensor was an inexpensive webcam and we were leveraging Alex’s 20 years expertise in computer vision to extract all the data that I mentioned above.

The early days were brutal. The hardware was not easy to scale. We ended buying 2 Makerbots to print the boxes containing our mini-PC but printing fairly large objects on Makerbots is NOT easy. M2M connections were hardly stable and we ended up switching providers multiple times. While Alex was busy building the backend and fine-tuning the computer vision algorithms, I was knocking on doors to get some pilots going. We installed several customers, mostly in the retail and QSR space like Ligne Roset and a few others. Competition was also intense as solutions like Euclid or Nomi were scaling while historic players like Shoppertrak were pretty entrenched with large retailers. Our key differentiator, to share with the public how stores were in real time, was not fully understood by our customers. They were open to get the data even though they did not put a lot of value on it, but were not ready to share the data with anyone else.

The pivot

Early signs were not good: customers weren’t solidly hooked, fundraising was hard, mostly because of the hardware component and the go-to-market strategy, and we learned that deploying sensors into our customers locations was:

Hard to scale on hardware unless you have the right resources (which we did not)

Hard to own the data you collect inside of retailers if it requires them to let you install a device

Slow moving sale cycle

Low monthly fees

Limited value of the data if it’s trapped inside the retailers.

At that point, we were deep into TechStars NY Spring 2013 program and really had to make a decision. Go deep in a B2B solution (traffic counters, retail analytics but highly competitive with entrenched players and low value for the data) or go back to the original vision and find a way to make it happen. The TechStars team, especially David, was instrumental in pushing us towards a pivot. So we jumped. It was freaking terrifying because it really meant turning our back on a lot of months invested in our previous approach, shutting down existing customers, and rebuilding a lot. But all that is sunken costs and, even though you’re emotionally attached to what you’ve built so far, if walking away from it is the only rational decision to still have a shot at it, you don’t look back.

Erin covered it in an article on PandoDaily – what she didn’t know at that time was that the pivot really happened a few weeks before the dreading demo day – 600 investors looking at you pitching them on stage at Webster Hall. So it was all about getting as much done as possible to show some early traction on our new model.

The pivot we made was to switch how we collected the data. Instead of looking at places from the inside (with all these frictions points I mentioned above), why not look at it from the outside: this way you own the data and you add another layer to it since you’re now also capturing number of people walking in the streets, cars passing by, trends in traffic etc.

June was insane – Alex and Warren, our CTO then, were building the backend and the computer vision algorithms while me, Jason, an awesome team member who took an early bet on us, and Dimitri, our incredibly efficient intern, were trying to deploy as many crowdsourced sensors as possible.

We were back into chasing a very big goal with a gutsy vision and that got all of us energized like crazy. That amazing feeling on being on 30 coffees every day, short nights, your mind constantly going back to improve our process, scale faster, the feeling of making giant leaps, days looking like months in achievements but like minutes in duration…

The fundraising

Thanks to the revised approach, we saw A LOT more traction with investors. Given that we were mostly selling the vision at this point, we had to go after ambitious investors that got the large vision. Alex and I are both in huge favor of over-involved investors rather than the opposite. Yes it takes time, yes you might not immediately see why you’re spending that much time on a board deck but, ultimately, you won’t be able to build that business alone. You need all the – smart – help you can get. Get it from your advisors, get it from your friends or family but also get it from your investors. Investors see repeatable patterns, trends, a bunch of companies that may be in your space, and they definitely don’t have your tunnel vision and will force you to get out of it (when they’re good and active).

Demo day was at the end of June and we scheduled meetings all of July and August while trying to keep on building the business. Fundraising is definitely distracting but if you split team, you can get a lot done. Early September, two great leads that we liked a lot emerged. As you may or may not know, once you have a lead, the rest goes pretty quickly – all the investors that were sitting in the sideline, waiting for a lead, can then commit pretty quickly and in matter of a couple of weeks, your round is pretty much done.

Due diligence took another 30 days. At that point, Alex was back into building mode along with Nik, our amazing lead engineer, who joined us from Google while I was spending a good chunk of my time with our lawyers finalizing things. We’ve been busy building and never took the time to announce who are our investors but we’re planning on doing that in January. Stay tuned on that and some other interesting product releases including our app that let you know in real time how are a bunch of places in New York. And feel free to sign up for the early beta on our site. You can even become one of our contributor and help make your city smarter!

Early product / market fit

Obviously once the money hit the bank, this is really just the beginning. I’ve been there in the past and seed money really only give you a shot at building the MVP of a product, prove a few elements of your initial vision, get you some early pilots and customers and somewhat of a product / market fit. So there’s really no cause for celebration, on the contrary stakes just got way higher…

My background is a lot around deal making: M&A, JV, sales, business development etc. So while we were closing our round, we obviously kept the ball rolling with potential customers and we signed very quickly our first pilot with the City of New York. The process is an illustration on how New York City, as an administration, came a long way under Michael Bloomberg. We worked with Michael Flowers and Chris Corcoran with the Mayor’s Office for Data Analytics, a “geek squad” (as the NYTimes called them) reporting to the Mayor and incredibly efficient at working with early stage companies and getting things done.

We now have another two big names and paying customers that are leveraging our data (still under wrap for now) and we’re making our way towards the product / market fit for the company. And since we got a lot of external validation from onboarding these pilots to winning the startup contest at the WebSummit, it really feels like we turned a corner!

They made it happen

Ok – this will feel like name dropping but I can’t over-insist on the critical importance of surrounding yourself with smart people that believe in what you do and I want to thank the people that made it happen for us. We were very lucky to get surrounded by awesome mentors during and after TechStars. People like Mike, Marissa, Ori, Alexandre, Sean, Jon, Matt, Darren and Taylor, Alexandra, Geoff, Thatcher and all our TechStars Spring 2013 alumni class – I don’t think we could have done it so far without you guys. If you stay clear of mentor whiplash, there’s an insane amount of value you can get by tapping all these extremely smart brains. And I don’t think we could have raised money without the insane will of Nicole who had Alex rehearse hundreds of times his pitch for Demo Day…

I should probably devote at some point a post on how to leverage personal mentorship but the short of it is that you should always complement company’s mentors and advisors with smart friends and personal mentors that can help you go over personal issues. Life in startup is definitely not for everyone and is brutal – there’s intense competition for attention, dollars, recognition etc. and you go through ups, downs, fights with your cofounders, doubts about your capacities, about how you deal with things and on and on and you have to find a way not to keep all that trapped inside. I would not have made it without the unlimited support of my lovely wife and that little dude.

2013’s key takeaways

This is really what surfaced for me when I tried to summarize what I learned this year building Placemeter along with Alex and the rest of the team:

Persistence: Startups are not for people who give up easily or get discouraged quickly. There’s a fine line between being stubborn and being persistent (more on that below) but you still need to get at it pretty strongly and not let go easily.

Adaptability: Well, you also need to adapt and make decision based on what you hear. If the market, the investors or even your friends are all telling you that your approach doesn’t make sense, don’t get tunnel vision. Make sure you listen and adapt your pitch, go to market or tech approach.

Resilience: Thick skin. You need one or you need to grow one quickly because of the amount of rejection you’ll be getting on a daily or even hourly basis.

Creativity: Your approach doesn’t work? You don’t get any traction with it? Get creative and find another way. You’re going to have to try so many approaches before maybe finding the right one.

Scalable vs Non scalable: There’s also something to be said about doing non scalable things at the beginning of a company. Things that cost more money that you want in the long run, that takes way more effort than you would want but that give you early results, liquidity etc. On our side, we realized that we needed to have a couple of key places in NY covered by our video streams, places like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. So we ended up knocking on doors and convincing businesses or individuals across the street to get them to place one of our sensors on their window. That made it for us.

I’m looking forward next year challenges – they’re going to be different, they’ll bring their lot of frustrations and depressing moments but also small and large wins and the overall intoxicating feeling of doing something impossible. We have an awesome team and that’s part of what get me super excited (one of the benefit of starting companies is that you get to work with people with whom you want to work with…), smart and engaged investors and mentors and an overall vision that get me out of bed in no time in the morning. Let’s catch up next year at the same period and see how we delivered then!

Hope to try to find more time next year to connect with friends and mentors – that’s one of my big regrets for last year – see you then!

Like this:

So how much should you look at your direct competitors and the overal ecosystem? Personally, this is something that drives me a little crazy. I can go nuts on it.

I usually set up the classic Google Alerts on all my direct competitors, make sure I check their site every couple of days to see if there’s any tweak or redesign, follow their blog posts etc. Well… Sometimes, I even go deeper and start monitoring the new connections on LinkedIn that their main sales guy is making or check their twitter feed. Borderline creepy right?

For many years, I strongly believed that staying on top of that was the right strategy. I did a little bit of thinking on that subject over the last few weeks and realize that this was extremely intoxicating and paralyzing. There’s something really stressing about it – it always looks like the competition is going faster than you, that they’re better funded, that they have better advisors, better website, better clients and convos… It really plays into your own internal fears as a startup founder.

I found 3 ways to get out of that panicky feeling:

1. Remember what makes your product or your strategy so awesome. There’s a couple of key differentiators in your favor between you and your competitors. If not, maybe you’re better funded, have better advisors, are getting smarter about specific verticals where you’re crushing it.

2. Talk to your co-founder, or your confident and rationalize: I found that really useful to go back to reality so to speak. Detail with him/her what the competition is pushing out and come up together with why you should stick to your current strategy (or maybe tweak?).

3. Go see your clients, go talk to your sale guys or your customer support team and listen, make sure you’re still executing well, that you don’t lose clients to that new offering from the competition, that you’re still acquiring new ones etc.

And then finally, just breathe… Being too close will usually push you to mimic competitors instead of innovating.

Saw David Cancel present the other day at Dogpatch Labs New York his data driven startups thesis. That guy goes straight to the point, no time lost on details. The whole presentation is really a must-read: how you need, from the start, to install a data driven culture in your startup (or in any project you’re starting to that matter). Test everything, get data for everything, and then iterate, iterate and iterate.

The 3 stages you need to go through (and in that order, this is critical) is to first get yourself operational dashboards (simple please! the simplest the better, if not nobody pays attention to it).

Once these are working reports used throughout the organization, you can move to getting yourself some funnel analysis and then move on to cohort analysis.

It’s all pretty clear in his presentation that I’ve embeded below. Direct link to David’s original post here.